Commercial preparations of acrolein and acrylonitrile have heretofore involved the oxidation and the ammoxidation of propylene, respectively.
However, because of the widely fluctuating availibility of various chemical feedstocks, it would be desirable to prepare acrolein and acrylonitrile from a propanol. One way to accomplish this would be to dehydrate the propanol catalytically and then oxidize or ammoxidize the resulting propylene by the known catalytic processes. Such a two-step process would obviously be more expensive than preparation directly from propylene.
Another possible solution would be to use the known catalysts in a single-step process of direct oxidation or ammoxidation of a propanol. This has been found to produce the desired acrolein and acrylonitrile, respectively, but in substantially lower yields than are obtained from propylene.